Concert review: Steely Dan at Hard Rock Live

See pictures from the Steely Dan concert at Hard Rock Live (Orlando Sentinel)

At its heart, Steely Dan’s music doesn’t seem to be constructed with a concert audience in mind.

Material that guitarist Walter Becker and keyboardist Donald Fagen revisited in a sold-out two-hour show on Wednesday at Hard Rock Live were intricately designed, densely moody pieces – even signature material from blockbuster albums such as 1977’s “Aja.”

That album’s title track, unveiled as an 8-minute opus in the early going, retained its identity as a shape-shifting composition built on a languid mix of jazzy piano, saxophone and subtle percussion. It’s built for those enormous headphones of the 1970s, where a listener can become lost in music in a solitary way.

Yet Steely Dan made it all work in a well-paced, precisely delivered performance that exhibited the group’s impressive range, a reach that extends from the atmospheric interludes to the show-closing string of catchy pop hits (“Josie,” “Peg,” “My Old School” and “Reeling in the Years”).

Dressed like bankers on vacation, Becker and Fagen make no concessions to rock-star clichés. They talk occasionally, but the banter sounds more like the lingo of an old jazz cat.

“I feel more like I do now, than when I first got here,” Becker announced in a goofy monologue in the middle of “Hey Nineteen.” “There’s one thing I know: This is the pinnacle, the peak, the absolute zenith of the summer of 2013.”

It was a high point, thanks to the formidable talents of an incredibly versatile 11-piece band that injected interesting twists into Steely Dan’s well-worn hybrid of jazz, pop and rock influences. Pianist Jim Beard, drummer Keith Carlock and guitarist Jon Herington were essential elements, but everyone had ample time to shine.